Reaching out to your community's members is an important community-management task. While the Higher Logic platform offers a variety of ways to contact these members (e.g., Discussion posts, Automation Rule emails, Announcements, etc.), this article explains the two main ways you can directly email the members of a specific community.

Method 1 - Email All Community Members

Up first, let's discuss the baseline Email Community Members functionality, including how to enable it, set up its default email template, and use it to email a community's members.

NOTE: This method of emailing community members is Higher Logic's default Email Community Members functionality; keep in mind, though, that it still must be enabled prior to use: Super Admins can control whether Community Admins are allowed to email their members via this method. If the Email Community Members option is not available to you, contact your Super Admin staff.If your organization licenses the optional Group Manager module, you'll have access to additional features and enhanced functionality. See Group Manager Overview to learn more about each of these features, and how to enable them.

Step 1 - Enable the Email Community Members Functionality

Super Admins can enable this feature on a Community Type by Community Type basis, giving them the flexibility to control which Community Admins can and cannot email their members.

1. Click Admin in the Webmaster Links menu.
2. Click Admin.

3. Select Community Types from the Communities menu.

4. Select the desired Community Type from the menu highlighted in the image below.
5. Scroll down and toggle the Enable Community Admins to send their community members emails? option to ON.

6. Click Save at the bottom of the page to apply this setting to all communities belonging to this Community Type. You'll want to perform these steps for any other Community Types you want to have this functionality.

NOTE: The remaining Community Emails options shown in the image above are only available if you license Group Manager.

Step 2 - Configure the Email Template

All emails sent using the Email Community Members feature are based on a single template. At this point, you'll want to see if there are any updates you want to make to it.

NOTE: If your organization licenses the optional Group Manager module, you can create and send unlimited templates.

To access this template:

1. Click Admin in the Webmaster Links menu.
2. Click Admin.

3. Select Email Templates from the Communities menu.

4. Select Community Messages from the Category menu.
5. Community Bulk Email is the template used by the Email Community Members feature. Click Edit to make any desired changes, but you generally shouldn't remove any of the default mail-merge variables already in place. Specifically, DO NOT remove the [CommunityAdminMessage] variable in either the HTML or text-only versions of the message. This variable is critical because it’s replaced with your or another admin’s message when emailing community members. If you license Group Manager, you also shouldn't remove [CommunityAdminHyperlinks], because this variable is populated with hyperlinks to uploaded files and/or meeting invitations, if applicable.
   
   With that said, feel free to otherwise customize this template to fit your organization’s needs. Then, click Finish at the bottom of the page.

Step 3 - Email a Community's Members

Now that this feature is enabled and its template is set up, let's learn how to actually email a community's members:

1. From a community's Home page, click Settings.
2. Click Email Community Members.

3. Decide whether you want to email:

1. All members who've joined in the last 30 days,
2. Or ALL of the community's members.

4. Regardless of the option you chose, the number of people who will receive your email are shown, and you can click the link to view them. Any members who have opted-out of community emails will NOT receive this email. Now, just enter your desired subject and message, and click Preview Email Before Sending to make sure your message is how you want it before sending it to the community—this gives you an opportunity to verify any variables you may have included in the template are working properly.
   
   If needed or desired, you can also add a meeting invitation or attachment along with your message using their respective buttons at the bottom. Once you're ready, click Send Email.

NOTE: Including invitations and attachments is not available in the baseline Email Community Members functionality, and is only available if you're licensing the optional Group Manager module. See Group Manager Overview for a comparison of these two features.

Super Admins can control whether Community Admins are allowed to include meeting invitations and attachments in these emails. If these options aren't available to you, contact your Super Admin staff.

Method 2 - Email a Specific Member

While reaching all of a community's members via an email blast is an important capability, you can also focus your outreach to a single individual when the need arises. From the community's Members tab, you can locate the desired user by:

1. Searching for them using the available criteria. This makes it much easier to find a specific person in a large community.
2. Browsing the member list at the bottom of the page. ALL of the community's members are listed here, and you can use the menus to filter them by name, company, city, state, or country (it's sorted by Name A—Z, by default). Click the page buttons at the bottom of the page to view more results if there are a lot of members.

3. Once you've found the person you want to reach out to, click Send Message and write your message in the pop-up. They'll receive your message in their profile Inbox AND in a notification email sent to their account’s primary email address.

NOTE: You can insert HTML tags in the message.